Paul McCabe

A Kirkcaldy high school will offer its pupils the best start to the day thanks to a donation from a local business.

Asif and Abada Akhtar, who own Smeaton Stores on the town’s Chestnut Avenue, donated £1000 to Balwearie High School, one of many generous contributions the couple have made within the community.

“We do quite a lot of community work,” Asif said, “we had spoken to Mr McNeil before the summer at the P7/S1 transition evening for our son coming to the school and told him we were very keen to make a donation.

“We are already involved with breakfast clubs at primary schools and they are amazing.”

Mr McNeil said the donation would keep the school’s breakfast club running for “months and months”.

He said: “We have a number of our young students living in areas of poverty so we decided to use this money to keep our breakfast club going.

“We depend upon donations so I am absolutely delighted to receive this money.”

The breakfast club is designed to help pupils who may come from a difficult background to get a good start to the day.

“Mainly the lower school will be involved,” Mr McNeil said, “we all know the importance of a good meal first thing in the morning.

“It would amaze you the numbers that do come to school without anything to eat and it’s not a good start to the day, so in that regards the breakfast club is very useful.

“For some of them this will be the best meal they get that day.”

The head teacher said he aims to work with more businesses in town the future.

“This is a very generous offer and I’m looking forward to working with Mr and Mrs Akhtar in the future,” he said.